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When Texas Governor Rick Perry said in a recent Republican
presidential candidates' debate that his sleep
is untroubled by doubts about the guilt of any of the 235 men and
women who have been executed on his watch, he pointed out that his
state has "a very thoughtful, a very clear process in place" to review
death penalty cases. A cornerstone of that process, in Texas and
elsewhere, is the Board of Pardons and Paroles, which is designed to
act as a safety valve, removed from the emotion of the crime and the
courtroom. It's a last resort, not to retry a case, but to ensure that
a conviction is so ironclad that there is no doubt that it merits the
ultimate punishment.

That safety valve failed in Georgia Tuesday, just as it has on a number
of occasions in Texas. The Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles denied
convicted murderer Troy Davis' last appeal for clemency, setting him
on a seemingly unstoppable course for execution Wednesday evening. (See the top 10 unsolved crimes.)

For the simplest picture of why that decision was so wrong  as so
many of Davis' myriad supporters have pleaded for years  just look
at the numbers.

 7: that's how many of the nine original eyewitnesses have recanted
their testimony against Davis.

 0: the amount of physical evidence linking Davis to the crime (no
fingerprints, no DNA, no weapon recovered).

 3: the number of jurors who voted for death in the
original trial who now believe their vote was a mistake.

 22: the number of years the family of slain police officer Mark
McPhail has had to wait for an answer to the question of whether or not Davis would die
for the crime.

The last number  a symptom of the interminable appeals process  would
seem to speak in favor of simply executing Davis and getting it over
with. Justice delayed, as Newt Gingrich said when he fought for a law
that limited death penalty appeals, is justice denied (a statement
that he seemed to believe pertained only to the families of the
victims, not the convicted). But the truth
is that the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles should have ended
this macabre theater when they had the chance three years ago, by
commuting Davis' death sentence and either letting him serve out a
life term or granting him a retrial. (See photos of ten men who were exonerated by the Innocence Project.)

Beyond all the evidentiary problems of Davis' case  to take one example, police
Re-enacted the crime scene with all the eyewitnesses together and talking to each
other, a practice which is now unheard of  it never had any hallmarks
of a case that should have been eligible for the ultimate penalty. It
was a senseless murder late at night that was only half-seen in a half-lit
Burger King parking lot. A good man was killed, but even death penalty
supporters, a number of whom have called for clemency in Davis' case,
would agree that death cases should be reserved for those with the
most incontrovertible evidence. Even before witnesses started
recanting and jurors started regretting, Davis' case never met that
standard.

"Seven of the nine witnesses have recanted at this point. That in and
of itself is problematic," says Mary Schmid Mergler, Senior Counsel
for the non-profit Constitution Project, whose high-profile advisers
(a mix of abolitionists and death penalty supporters) have come out in
favor of clemency for Davis. "But the most troubling thing is just the
fact that a death penalty conviction rests solely on eyewitness
testimony to begin with."

That was one of the arguments made in Monday's board meeting before
the five board members appointed by former Governor Sonny Perdue
(three of the members are new since Davis' case was initially heard in 2008). It
was a quick affair: three hours for the defense, the same for the
prosecution  though defense lawyers complained the prosecution got
more time  followed by a decision released just after 8am the next morning.